The Dossier is DONE!!!

We have just crossed another big milestone in our adoption journey- submitting our dossier to our agency!!!  A dossier is basically notarized proof of every aspect of our lives from our birth records, finances, criminal records (thankfully nothing to report) health insurance, references and just about anything else you can document.   The dossier is aka the “paper chase” and often involves lots of time, wracked nerves and multiple explanations such as “you must write in BLUE ink and even though are a doctor we need you write legibly and show your ID to our notary please”.  We worked on the various required documents (around 30 total) while we were waiting on the all important 1-171H letter from the US government granting us permission to adopt an orphan or two from Ethiopia.  This was the last piece to our dossier puzzle and it actually arrived this past weekend while Trace and I were away at an adoption conference in Austin (more about the conference in my next post.)  We got home around 6pm Sunday night and found the letter in a pile of mail.  I started shaking when I saw it and almost started crying when I opened it.  That letter represented the key to the next step toward being on the official waiting list to be matched with our child.     

Even though we anxiously waited for the 1-171H approval we labored through getting the rest of the dossier together. In fact, we just got the last two documents needed the day before we left for Austin- talk about a close call!  My big procrastination was agonizing over the photo books we were required to provide (4 copies to be exact) that has two purposes, 1- for the Ethiopian government to see pictures of us and our home, and 2- for our child’s caregivers to see and share with our child while he is waiting to be adopted by us.  Since we are adopting a baby our child will probably have no clue what our book looks like BUT I still had visions in my head that I needed the book to be good, or least decent.  After our computer crashed and all our pictures with it- I decided that an adequate book would do.  It ended up being 6 pages total (2-4 pics per page), and I’m totally great with that now.  I’ve learned a couple of lessons- 1- we need to get an external hard drive for our new computer, and 2- Simplifying rather than procrastinating is a good strategy for me going forward J 

The next steps for us, as we understand them, are:

• Our dossier is reviewed by our agency and then sent to Austin (capital of TX) to verify all of our notary seals and be authenticated

• After the notaries are verified (called apostilled) then the dossier will be sent to the State Department is Washington, DC to be authenticated again

• Then it will be sent to the Ethiopian Consulate to be authenticated again.

• It then gets sent back to our agency where we should be placed on the waiting list to FINALLY be matched with a child!!!

I will write in more detail about the waiting process later, but wanted to post the good news!!!